Presidential psychopath? Here's a test

Many in the blogosphere and a few in the mainstream media have noted that, based on his public statements and actions, there seems to be something slightly peculiar about President Bush's behavior.

Some have even speculated that President Bush may have psychopathic tendencies.

One way to judge for yourself is to use the below standard evaluation form used by psychiatrists and see how your insight into the President's public behavior squares with the "psychopath" hypothesis. (You might have to wait a couple of seconds for the form to load.)

Note that you must check off all items before the evaluation can be made.

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Added comment: Poll now closed and final results posted below.

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In contemporary research and clinical practice, Robert Hare's Psychopathy Checklist-Revised (PCL-R), below, is the psycho-diagnostic tool most commonly used to assess Psychopathy.

This version of PCL-R excludes items that cannot be determined from what is in the public record regarding President Bush. Those items are preselected as "Doesn't Apply" and their omission is factored into the final score. (Please note that the interactive poll functions are disabled.)

POLL CLOSED 1/3/2007, 6:30 P.M., CST - FINAL RESULTS BELOW

Behavioral Trait	Doesn't Apply	Applies Somewhat	Fully Applies
Glibness/superficial charm
Grandiose sense of self-worth
Need for stimulation/proneness to boredom
Pathological lying
Conning/manipulative
Lack of remorse or guilt
Shallow affect
Callous/lack of empathy
Parasitic lifestyle
Poor behavioral controls
Promiscuous sexual behavior (N/A)
Early behavioral problems
Lack of realistic, long-term goals
Impulsivity
Irresponsibility
Failure to accept responsibility for own actions
Many short-term marital relationships (N/A)
Juvenile delinquency (N/A)
Revocation of conditional release (N/A)
Criminal versatility

FINAL RESULTS: Out of 6,595 evaluations submitted, the average score is 32.3850. Discarding both high (40) and low (1) scores produces 5,540 submissions with an average of 31.0404.

4,499 respondents out of 6,595 (68 percent) rated President Bush's public behavior as consistent with that of a psychopath by submitting evaluations with scores over 30.

A score higher than 30 supports a diagnosis of psychopathy (25 in some studies -- 5,566 [84 percent] placed Bush in this category).

US by state breakdown - all scores - (4,460 scores by identifiable state):

State Count Avg. Score AK 17 31 AL 29 32 AR 15 35 AZ 68 32 CA 827 32 CO 141 31 CT 53 33 DC 41 30 DE 8 36 FL 140 32 GA 138 30 HI 25 34 IA 45 31 ID 13 32 IL 204 32 IN 44 31 KS 29 31 KY 18 29 LA 26 32 MA 230 31 MD 97 31 ME 17 35 MI 114 32 MN 81 30 MO 74 33

State Count Avg. Score MS 9 35 MT 10 28 NC 100 31 ND 6 26 NE 20 35 NH 15 36 NJ 126 32 NM 18 29 NV 18 31 NY 336 32 OH 115 31 OK 25 28 OR 142 33 PA 124 32 RI 16 36 SC 27 30 SD 3 29 TN 39 34 TX 274 31 UT 26 32 VA 129 31 VT 12 33 WA 264 32 WI 95 32 WV 5 28 WY 12 27

Outside US by country breakdown - all countries with >3 submissions - (1,313 scores by identifiable country):

Country Count Avg. Score Argentina 4 34 Australia 161 31 Austria 10 34 Belgium 17 33 Brazil 7 33 Canada 330 32 Chile 5 33 China 4 34 Czech Republic 6 28 Denmark 26 28 Finland 22 27 France 30 33 Germany 74 30 India 9 32 Ireland 22 33 Israel 5 27

Country Count Avg. Score Italy 20 34 Japan 27 30 Luxembourg 4 34 Malaysia 4 35 Netherlands 41 34 New Zealand 36 31 Norway 19 33 Portugal 10 30 Singapore 9 29 South Africa 10 34 Spain 17 29 Sweden 17 31 Switzerland 20 31 Taiwan 6 29 Thailand 5 27 United Kingdom 330 31 Uruguay 6 32

Forensic studies of prison populations have reported average scores of around 22 on PCL-R; "normal" control populations show an average score of around 5.

Scores were adjusted for uncounted items.

Note this reflects only submitted evaluations and doesn't represent a truly random sample.